Secrets and Masks

28. The Dollhouse

TW; references to slavery, forced sexual relationships, and rape

5th May

It really is strange, how a smile can change so much.

How something as simple as the smallest upturn of a person's lips, just the pull of a few muscles, can suddenly change someone's whole perspective. A smile could do a lot of things, it could do a lot of good, Hermione had seen that first hand.

She often wore hers like a mask, concealing how she actually felt. She wore it when she trained the newer recruits, flashed it like a promise when she told them about the confidence she had in the Order's future, in their victory, even through the small periods where she'd lost faith herself.

She often thought Harry used his like a suit of armour to protect everyone. He used it daily, wearing it when he went through battle plans or helped out in the infirmary. He offered it to everyone, anyone who needed it, trying to incite hope, hoping that if they saw that the Chosen One was smiling and confident, then there was light at the end of the tunnel. They just needed to be patient, to hang on.

The med-witches of the Order used theirs differently. They used theirs as a mercy, a different form of medicine. In those torturous moments when Fleur knew that she was about to lose patients, she always did the same thing. She'd draw a slow breath, sit on the edge of the bed, take their hands in her own and offer them her most gentle smile.

The effects were always the same. The instant she would smile down at them, the panic would ease from their eyes. It was as though the warmth of her smile melted away the pain in their bones, warded off all the discomfort, and allowed them to just float. Without pain. Weightless, until they gently drifted to that other place where hopefully the world was kinder. Fleur always held their hands until the very end.

Of course, rationally, everyone knew the smiles the nurses offered didn't actually relieve pain, but they seemed to ease the suffering of those on death's door, like it helped them accept their fate, and welcome the blackness.

It was a kindness, really. The world had become such a dark place since the beginning of the war, and the last thing many people saw before they met their end was blood and screams and green curses. Those who were able to slip off peacefully with the lovely face of a healer smiling down on them were considered the lucky ones.

Hermione had always hoped that when her time came, when the war finally caught up with her and all her clever little ideas had abandoned her, that she'd look up and see someone she knew smiling down at her as she took her last breath.

Yes, Hermione knew first hand how much good something as simple as a smile could do in times of war. So it had never occurred to her how much damage one could do, too, if it was worn at the wrong moment.

But then Malfoy had smiled.

He'd fucking smiled as Theo held up a decapitated head. And he'd kept smiling, even as he watched his friend play with it, like it was the most normal thing in the world, a regular occurrence.

Even as it had happened, Hermione was adamant that she must have imagined it. That it must have been a trick of the lights, or that the events of the day had been too much, and her mind was playing games with her.  But no, no matter how long she stared at Malfoy, no matter how much she squinted and willed that slight upturn of his lips to disappear, it didn't.

The instant they reappeared in the gardens of his estate, Hermione tore Malfoy's arms from around her waist and stormed towards the estate. If his touch hadn't been necessary to Apparate her here - if she hadn't have been so desperate to get out of that bloody theatre - she wouldn't have let him touch her at all.